Sounding Off

Rhythm, Music, and Identity in West African and Caribbean Francophone Novels

A look at how West African and Caribbean Francophone writers use rhythm, music, and sound to create and negotiate identity

Acknowledgments Introduction

1. Rhythm and Transcultural PoeticsRhythm and TranscultureMethod

2. Rhythm and Reappropriation in God’s Bits of Wood and The Suns of IndependenceLanguage and the Language of MusicRhythm and Reappropriation in the NovelInstrumentaliture at WorkRhythm and TransformationOrdinary and Extraordinary Rhythms

4. Music and Mourning in Crossing the Mangrove and Solibo MagnificentMemory, Mourning, and Mosaic IdentitiesRhythm, Music, and Identity as ProcessThe Sounds of Death and MourningConfiguring Rhythmic and Musically Mediated Identities

Concluding Remarks Works Cited Index

Julie Huntington is an Assistant Professor of French at Marymount Manhattan College.

"Huntington’s emphasis on the interconnections of the related arts—music, poetry, fiction, oral tradition etc.—is one of the few to treat systematically, and in a sound, sophisticated theoretical and ethnographic framework, the important traits of African literary, oral and musical productions. Sounding Off will make a great contribution to the interdisciplinary study and thus provide a deeper understanding of musical and literary-artistic productions in African and diasporan communities." —Daniel Avorgbedor, Ohio State University, Columbus